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Tony Dorsett has ICE

This is how he looked as a running back for the Dallas Cowboys

I always feel sad when I write about ex-football players. Too often, the stories are about death, brain disease and violence. When I read about Tony Dorsett, the story involved the last: brain disease. He was diagnosed in 2013 with CTE, a degenerative brain disease linked to head trauma, and spoke about how it affects his life in a radio interview Sunday. CTE is something that is normally found in corpses of former players like Junior Seau but Dorsett volunteered to be in a UCLA study to learn what had happened to his brain. Dorsett was a running back with the Dallas Cowboys and I read about how he said he never thought his football career would end like this.

He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame

Elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame as one of the leading rushers of all time

Dorsett was an outstanding player and his son also played football. He has no regrets about playing the sport. And yet, There is the increasing loss of himself and his mental capacity to look forward to. At some point he may not know how he was and what kind of life will that be? These stories rip out your heart because no one pledges to change their behavior, there are no happy endings or cures, there’s just death.

This is a more recent picture, following his diagnosis with a disease that will rob him of his memories.